Chapter Two
Half an hour before landing
~Chance~
The flight attendant entered the cabin of the plane where I sat before a wireless printer in its slot carved in the round table bolted to the floor, waiting for it to spit out the last sheet of the paperwork I’d be taking with me once I was on the ground again. She halted in the center of the red-carpeted aisle.
“Mr. Middleton, please buckle up, terminate your access to the internet and all calls. We’re waiting for the air traffic controllers to let us land. Right now, they have us circling around the airport until space has been found for us to set down. It seems Arrow’s Airport is pretty busy today,” she announced in a pleasant tone meant to soothe.
I didn’t bother to look up, could see every inch of her from my side view. She was beautiful, blonde, and built to attract with curves that would make a race track jealous. “Okay, Alice.”
“Thank you.” She loitered and tilted her head to the side instead of vanishing like I wanted her to. “Is everything okay, Mr. Middleton? Do you need anything before we land? A Scotch? A back rub?”
You wish. I transformed that thought to my face, then glowered at her. She paled, about-faced on her sensible heels, and ghosted the cabin.
I should feel bad about intimidating her. Yeah, well, I don’t, not after dealing with enough gold diggers to know one when I see and hear one.
When the last sheet glided onto the printer’s tray, I slammed my laptop shut, placing it in the empty seat beside me to do as the stewardess asked, beyond infuriated with Mahogany Jefferson. She was so many things to me. Love of my life. Breaker of my heart. Ruiner of my future. I assumed I’d never hear from her again, then out of the blue came a voicemail from her about my daughter dying of leukemia.
My daughter.
After stacking the paperwork in a manila folder and banging it down on the table, I leaned forward and cradled my head in my hands, distressed, heart beating fast enough to worry a cardiologist. It hadn’t pumped a single drop of blood since Mahogany broke things off with me. Now, it was making up for lost time of lying dormant in my chest after I’ve learned that she’d done the one thing I’d forbidden her to do. Not because I really was the cold son of a bitch she thought I was, well, I am that, but because having my blood type was a death sentence.
I’d hoped if I acted like a cold son of a bitch when it came to children, Mahogany would let the subject drop. I could spare her and any child we weren’t supposed to have together from the tragedy she and Majestic were currently locked in anyway. Selfishly, I could also avoid admitting that I wanted children with only her but wouldn’t dare risk her having them, condemning them to suffer from a variety of possible illnesses if not all of them at once. I would’ve been open to adopting when she was ready for motherhood, a moot point now. I was a father and all my nightmares had become reality.
From the way I talked to Mahogany before she left me, she likely expected me to ask for proof that Majestic was mine before I underwent any procedure to save our child, just to make her life a living hell. Majestic’s illness was already producing a living hell for Mahogany, who I thought loved hard. Apparently, she loved not at all when pertaining to me. She had me convinced she could be too loyal for her own damn good sometimes. I don’t believe that about her anymore either, so I would ask for proof of paternity but it’s a waste of time. Mahogany would’ve already been warned of the risks if she called up the wrong father and allowed him to give her daughter their stem cells. And if she called me, it was because she wanted her daughter to live.
Just like Mahogany to raise a child alone because she was stubborn as hell. I guaranteed that hadn’t changed, but my daughter was the true reason why she left me. I felt ridiculous for believing Mahogany was a good woman through and through back then, one I couldn’t look in the face and confess my deepest, darkest secret to because I didn’t want to lose her faster than I was already going to. Well, that secret was out. Yet, I can’t bring myself to talk to her. I just left in the middle of a meeting with a potential client, jumped on my plane, and flew to Colorado to do what I could for Majestic, therefore for Mahogany. Her name itself made me weak-kneed. I can’t count how many times I wished I could forget it. Forget her and every time I slid into the soft, soaked tunnel of her body and slaked my thirst for her. Never quenched.
Satisfaction lasted for a little while until she smiled or turned a certain way. If she just breathed on me, I was ready to make love to her again. It was a beautiful but vicious cycle. The desire never went away. I never found someone else to take her place. God knows I tried. Took me six months of useless dating and not being able to bring the night to a satisfactory close with any woman after Mahogany to figure out that she was it for me. Being incapable of making love messed with my head big time, until I figured out what my problem was: my heart was longing for Mahogany and affecting my body to the point where it wouldn’t take satisfaction from any other woman or give it, as if it would be betraying her. At least my cock allowed my hands to take her place but gave empty climaxes. I was okay with that. Knew I would never find another like her. Loved her enough to let go, so I wouldn’t keep her from what she felt that she needed and would only get from another man. I had no idea how that choice made before we broke up would affect me mentally and physically until I was without her. Low and behold, she’d already had the one thing I wouldn’t give her tucked safely and secretly away in her body when she packed her bags and jetted away without leaving a Dear John letter behind for me.
I regret now more than ever not finding her. Not bringing her back. Not making her tell me what was truly on her mind the last night we spoke. Not making her tell me the truth just as she tried to get me to do. And now I regretted not raising my daughter the most. If my child was anything like her mother, she was majestic, stood tall and regal like Mahogany, stubborn, but fair-skinned where Mahogany had a drop of beige to create her earthy skin tone. I had used my fingertips to trace every inch of her flesh for hours while I wondered what gene pool had mixed to create that gorgeous woman who was now the bane of my existence. She had made me into a fucking killer anyway and Majestic, my only child, was my victim.
Grief struck me so damn hard I threw my head back and howled like a madman, more sorrowful for what Majestic was going through than me. And if I didn’t get there in time to save her, Mahogany would rue the day she ever met me.
My phone beeped, signaling a voicemail had come through. The ringer was turned off for my peace of mind and because my business was at a standstill until my daughter was out of the woods, but my shareholders and business affiliates didn’t know that. I picked up the device from the top of my briefcase next to the laptop, then swiped the icon of the program that would read the voicemail to me like a text.
I won’t ask for anything else from you.
You don’t even have to meet her or see me.
Just be a decent man and save her.
And call me.
Please.
‘I’ll do anything if you help my daughter.’ I must’ve reread that line over fifty times on the app before I was forced back in my seat by the plane dipping down to land finally. Mahogany made two major mistakes when she left an open-ended line like that on my voicemail. One, she left it on my voicemail when she’d already done all she needed to do to get me to her and Majestic’s side with the first voicemail. Two, she had let her desperation take control of the situation and compel words from her that she didn’t expect to be taken in literal context. No one ever did... until their words were used against them to get something from them that they never thought they’d have to give up unwillingly.
The more I read the line, the more I plotted against Mahogany. She’ll do anything, she said. Well, I needed something done: reversal of the heartache she caused me. I had lived with it unhappily for her. I wanted liberation from her hold on me, freedom to have a happy life with someone else. Only a fool would’ve fallen in love with her in the first place, trusted her. She hadn’t deserved for me to willingly endure loneliness to insure her happiness, nor the lies I had told myself about who she was inside: loving, loyal, and worthy, but I still wanted her who was a witch.
I won’t be shocked if she practiced black magic, binding me to her. A grave mistake on her part because I was going to give my body what she made it want the most: her, using her body to fall out of love with her, break my heartstrings attached to her. All I had to do was hold her to her promise on the voicemail until every one of those strings was clipped and my disgust for what she had done to me, but more importantly to Majestic, built so high I couldn’t stand to be in her presence.
Looking out the porthole next to me, the last plane waiting for takeoff on the tarmac rose into the sky as my mind made an extensive list of the things Mahogany would be doing. Mentally staging a war was the only thing keeping me from going insane as my child, who does not know me, laid in a bed near death. Mahogany would do everything I asked because once she was a keeper of her word, who never promised that she wouldn’t have my child. So what she had found a loophole? She had still broken my trust. Now, that cold son of a bitch I could be sometimes would be let out to play with Mahogany until I loved her no longer. Finally.
Alice appeared in the doorway between the cabin and the flight attendant’s quarters. “Mr. Middleton,” she called to me timidly, “You can deplane now and ah, I want to apologize for—”
I sat up abruptly, gathering what I needed for my trip to the hospital. “Don’t worry about it, Alice. We all do what we have to, to get what we want in life, right?” Including taking it from others even when they don’t want to give it.
She nodded, twisting and untwisting her fingers in knots nervously. “Right.”
“Just don’t do it again.” The warning of what would happen next to her was in my tone and unmistakable.
She nodded even faster. “No sir… I mean yes sir.”
“Go back home. Rest. I’ll be in Arrow for a while, at least a week. Tell that to Captain Norlen for me, will you? I’ll call him when I’m ready to go home.”
“Yes sir.” She vanished into the cockpit to relay the message.
I exited the plane, then entered the building to find the checkout counter where I was handed the keys to a top of the line BMW. The heavily-tinted sedan was parked beside a Dodge Avenger that seemed to be on its last legs. Accessing the GPS system, I entered Arrow General Hospital on the touch screen, then let the automated female voice lead me to my destination, to my daughter.
Quickly parking, I sought out the nearest nurse’s station, announced who I was with identification in hand, then asked for Dr. Blane and Majestic’s room number. “I’m her father.” As much as that broke my heart to say, it made my chest puff out proudly.
I was a father, had come to terms with never being that a long time ago when it was me in a hospital bed, not knowing whether I was going to live or die. At least Majestic was too young to understand or remember this time in her life if she survived, and God willing, she would live.
“Yes lord, no wonder little Majestic is so cute,” a middle-aged nurse muttered while seated behind a computer in navy-blue scrubs, examining my identification before giving it back, grinning. “Here you go, sweetheart. I’ll have Dr. Blane up here in no time for you. Anything else you want?”
I shook my head, used to woman coming on to me in subtle ways and not so subtle.
Behind her, an identically-dressed younger nurse was piling up clipboards on a backside countertop and rolling her eyes heavenwards. “Don’t do that, Doris.”
Doris smirked, picked up her desk phone, and punched in some numbers. “I’m not doing it, Felicia. He’s doing it by being tall, dark, and handsome in front of me. Shit, I’m old, not dead, and if I didn’t ask if he needed anything, I wouldn’t know… Yes, Dr. Blane, Majestic’s father is here to see you. I’m sure you’re doing your rounds but wouldn’t mind if I interrupted you with Mr. Chance Middleton’s arrival… I didn’t think so… He’s at the nurse’s station on the ground floor… I sure will take care of him until you get here.” Then she winked at me.
I sniggered.
The younger nurse got butter fingers and fumbled the clipboards, which landed on the floor. Felicia was too shocked by Doris’ behavior, and probably would’ve fainted dead away if she’d saw the wink. “Doris, be professional! Who’s the oldest and should know better here? I’m calling Miss Millie and letting her know how her friend is acting at work.”
“Miss Millie ain’t the boss of me, Felicia, but you can call her to gossip if you want to. If people ain’t talking about you, you ain’t relevant.”
Dr. Blane showed up then, extending his hand to me for a strong-gripped hand shake. “Be good, Doris. Glad you made it, Mr. Middleton, but Mahogany just left looking for you in Utah.”
Is that right? One of the planes that took off before mine set down must’ve been hers, and she and Dr. Blane have to be pretty close if he’s calling her by her first name.
“We probably passed each other in the sky.” Oddly, I was glad she wasn’t heremy emotions were too heightened, and I’d kiss the hell out of her for hello instead of playing it cool and calculating around her. “What do you need me to do for Majestic, Dr. Blane? Then, I’d like to see her.”
“Sure thing. Walk with me to a triage room and be glad medicine has come a long way or I’d have to put you in a gown and drill into your hips to get the stem cells that she needs. I just take a few, like ten, tubes of blood from you, extract the stem cells from there to treat your daughter with, along with what I hope is her next to last round of chemo. With any luck afterwards, she’ll go home to recover in a few days.”
As we walked along the hall, ‘Treat your daughter’ and ‘Go home to recover’ replayed in my head. Those were the words I never wanted to hear a doctor say regarding my child. Except, he was saying them. I’d been thrown head first into this moment. It was like diving into a pool with no water in it, and nothing was going to rewrite this day in history. I was going to have to get through it, then find Mahogany to make her pay dearly for endangering a child simply by giving birth to one with my genetics. And I was so fucking furious I had to push back the emotions running unchecked through me before I could pick up the dropped threads of the conversation.
“Ten tubes is not a few, Dr. Blane. How is Majestic doing right now white-blood-cell-count wise?”
He veered around a corner, taking an immediately left into a small room with medical files stacked almost to the ceiling on iron shelves and a raised chair with extended armrests meant for taking blood in. I sat down in it without being prompted to. He collected glass tubes, a tourniquet, and a plastic-wrapped needle.
“Mr. Middleton, I’m sorry to say but her white blood cell count is too high and slowly strangling her organs. I, however, could drill into your hips with no anesthesia one time each if you like that number better than ten,” he joked, or maybe he wasn’t joking.
“No thank you very much, if my hips are not needed right now. A few tubes of blood is fine. We’ll save the hip drilling for when it’s necessary.”
I needed my hips for getting payback. Mahogany has no idea what I had in store for her.
“Alright, Mr. Middleton, pick a sleeve and roll it up. I’ll take it from there.”
********
An hour and a half later back in Colorado
~Mahogany~
After driving home to change my clothes and stall on telling my baby that her mother couldn’t save her, night had settled in. At the hospital, I was told I’d find Dr. Blane in the triage room on the first floor. I slunk in there like an old tired lady, then slumped against the nearest wall, head hung low.
“I couldn’t find him, Dr. Blane,” I said pitifully.
He glimpsed up from the file he was flipping through and writing notes in. “I’m sure you couldn’t find him.”
I rolled my head in his direction, frowning at him. “What does that mean?”
“Well, he was here while you were in Utah.”
I was sure I was hearing things. “What did you say?”
“He was here. Tall, white guy, brunette, medium-length hair, medium build, tailored business suit, snappy gray eyes, real self-confident, hh blood type, and very angry. Although, he tried to hide that he was hotter than a just-fired thirty-eight pistol under a deep, smooth voice that flowed like wine. Oh, and he had his medical history printed and on hand for me.” That sounded just like the Chance that would’ve come here today, prepared and pissed off with printouts he’d have made just to have something to do to keep from losing his shit on the way here.
“Okay,” I uttered, stunned as the first inkling of hope bubbled under the surface of my skin.
It lent me enough to strength to hold my head up while my hands palmed the wall to keep the rest of me standing. I began to breathe too hard as I tried to think of what to do next. The rest of my hopes were trying to fly high. I pushed them down. Letting them soar only to have them cruelly shot down would do me in completely.
Dr. Blane swung around, propped his backside against the countertop buried under more medical files, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Mr. Middleton didn’t call you and tell you that he was coming here today?”
“No, he never called me back and, by the time I got to his building, he was gone on some work emergency. That’s what the guard at Chance’s company told me, but Chance must’ve been on his way here. How did I miss him?” Then I started to put what seemed like unrelated events together in a rush. “The plane I saw over the airport, it was his, so he arrived as I boarded my plane. That means I had gotten my sign that everything was going to be okay after all, but I didn’t know how to interpret it, so I wrote it off as irrelevant. The security guard said he thought it was a work emergency, but it wasn’t. Majestic was the emergency. Chance had dropped everything for her.” I was getting hysterical.
Dr. Blane cocked an eyebrow, not able to follow my rambling. “I don’t know if Majestic would be considered a work emergency, but he was here doing his duty as a father and apologizing to Majestic for cursing her with what the medical profession calls Bombay blood from his grandmother who’s from Mumbai. Maybe you’re going to pay him for giving his time, so it can be considered work by the government who would be more than glad to tax the money, but I’m not giving him a cent.”
Hope bomb rushed me anyway, taking my breath, but Dr. Blane had said Chance gave his time, not his blood. I had to find Chance and do whatever I had to, to get him to give blood. Standing erect, I prepared to take off running, bouncing toward the door then bouncing back in place, unable to keep still suddenly.
“Where is he now? He has to give his blood, Dr. Blane!” I cried.
He crossed the room in his navy-blue clogs and held me in one place by gripping my forearms. “Calm down, Mahogany, before you start to hyperventilate. I don’t know where he is now, but he gave me his blood already, checked in on Majestic for about twenty minutes, and left. He said he’d be back in an hour or two at the latest, that he had something to do.”
In disbelief, I gripped Dr. Blane’s upper arms back and shook him. “He gave his blood!”
“Yes, I said that already and that he left afterwards, remember? Doesn’t take but a minute to give blood. After processing it, another minute or two to transfuse it to Majestic.” Then he grinned. “You missed a lot.” Obviously, and I didn’t have to persuade Chance to do the right thing by Majestic, but he was always a good man.
“Oh my God! Majestic!” I yelled at the top of my voice for no reason other than I was filled with pure joy. “How is she? Talk quick! I need to go to her!”
“No, you don’t, not like this. Someone might think you’re hopped up on uppers and call children services, thinking you’re a drug addict. You need to sit down and catch your breath. She’s fine. The transfusion went well. I expect her to be doing well too, even better in a few days. Right now, she’s still sedated. I had a nurse take her feeding tube out and when she wakes up, we’ll see if Majestic can eat something light. You don’t get to go in her room with all this energy, though you look like you haven’t slept in a month. When was the last time you ate and had eight hours of sleep?”
“I…” Didn’t know, so I shrugged.
“Oh, that’s bad. I thought I’d gotten through to you about letting yourself get run down. I guess not,” he scolded. “Go to the cafeteria and get whatever you want on me, then meet me in Majestic’s room in twenty minutes. I’ll tell you what my prognosis is for her condition then and only then. I catch you in her room before then, you’re off her visitor’s list for the night.”
I felt about two inches tall for being drained and energized at the same time, and thoroughly chastised. “Okay, but I can’t accept—”
“Yes, you can because it’s the only way I’ll be able to prove you’ve really done what I said. Majestic needs her mother, but she’ll be burying you if you stress any more than you’re doing on an empty stomach and running on empty. If I have to run up my tab in the cafeteria to make sure you live through this too, then that’s what I’ll do. Jeez, woman, you’re going to get me fired for not being able to stay disconnected from your situation. No wonder I’m gay. Women are too much.”
I did a double take. “I would’ve never guessed that about you, but I should have after the description you gave of Chance. Can you say detailed, Dr. Blane?”
He chuckled. “It’s good you couldn’t have guessed that about me before now. That means I did something right according to the rules, and you didn’t hear about my status from me either. Doctors are supposed to be detached, closemouthed about themselves, and cold to patients and their family members, but who couldn’t love Majestic?”
“Her father,” ripped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
He sucked air through his teeth. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“I’m not sure either at this point. He came through for her without saying one word to me.” And it saddened me that I didn’t have any more confidence in Chance communicating openly with me than I did three years ago.
“Go eat, Mahogany. Things will look better in the morning.” My shift in mood must’ve been as clear as glass to him.
“Done.”
I made my way quietly to the cafeteria, but Chance avoiding me stopped me from being completely happy about the turnaround in events. He still affected me, and I wanted to see him again even if he wasn’t happy with me right now. I wasn’t sorry for keeping Majestic from him until I couldn’t, but hated that I had deceived him. My deceit had almost been Majestic’s undoing, but I would never repent for having her. I regretted that Chance and I couldn’t raise her together, couldn’t continue to love one another in a healthy relationship. Our ups and downs had broken us, making me have to live without him. That, I was sorry for and he would never know it.
After selecting a cold cut sandwich and a bottle of water that I paid for with the little cash in my pocket, doing what I could to save Dr. Blane’s job, I texted Tommy and Kat an update, then sneaked back to Majestic’s room to watch over her and eat. The dark rings around her eyes were already lightening up while her skin was darkening, slowly on its way back to its normal tone. Her breathing was deeper and slower, all signs that she was getting better already. After what Chance had done for Majestic, if I had fallen out of love with him, I’d have fallen right back in, but I never stopped loving him.
The urge to call him and thank him hit me square between the eyes. He wouldn’t answer my call though, or appreciate another voicemail with my voice on it. Because of that, my heart ached a little. I’d been through worst heartache because of him though, so the pain wasn’t as bothersome. I went through a lot more when getting used to being without him. Dating still wasn’t an option for me yet. No other man was Chance.
At some point after disposing of my sandwich wrapper and Majestic’s first little snore that meant she was resting finally, sleep took me. Hyperawareness buzzed around my unconsciousness like a pack of bees the whole while I slept it seemed, making my nap unpeaceful. Eventually, I gave up on getting forty winks. Exhausted in the body, eyelids heavy, my ears perked up first, listening for the reason of the nagging sensation that woke me, like maybe Majestic was woke and up to no good. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary though except my back that was cramping in the awkward position of being bent over Majestic’s bed while still in my chair, with my head on top of my forearms that had gone numb.
Even in my sleep, I wanted to be near her. The room was dead silent but bright, which meant morning had arrived. Could go back to sleep if I wanted to, a rarity at home when Majestic was there, so I should indulge myself while I had the chance, but something was off. It was too quiet in here. Even sick, Majestic made noise, snoring or suckling her lips. When she was well, she chatted away to her stuffed animals or released sucking sounds as she often did when chewing on something she shouldn’t to ease the teething that was lasting forever. The cancer had slowed down her body’s ability to work properly and quickly.
I opened my eyes that were dry and gritty, visibly searching for what was bothering me in my sleep. The first thing I saw was Chance sitting on the opposite side of the bed, with his head thrown back against the armchair as if he was relaxing in a sauna. He was breathtaking in his wrinkled baby-blue shirt and black slacks, hair tousled as if he’d slept at some point in his chair too, or ran his hands through his longish tresses a thousand times during the night. His eyes contradicted his peaceable disposition, they were like razor-blades, cutting me to pieces. My past had come back to hurt me, and I had nowhere to run.
“Ohhhh shit,” I stressed under my breath.
His gray orbs narrowed on me. “‘Oh shit’ is right, Mahogany.”
The blood ran cold in my body. He was so much angrier than I imagined he would be once he found out about Majestic.